I
Breton had gone; the room was empty.
Rachel came and, kneeling on the floor, hid her face in Roddy's coat. He put his hands about hers.
His only desire now was that there should be peaceful silence. His hatred for scenes had always been with him an instinct, natural, alert, untiring, so that he would undertake many labours, forgo many pleasant prizes, if only emotional crises might be avoided.
This afternoon had showered upon him a relentless succession of reverberating displays, he had perceived one human being after another reveal quite nakedly their tumultuous feelings. It was, for him, precisely as though the Duchess, Rachel, Breton had stripped there before him and expected him to display no astonishment at their so doing—that he should have been the author of the business made it no better; he reflected that he had even looked forward with excitement to the affair. "If I had only known how beastly...."
He was ashamed—ashamed of his own action in provoking these things, ashamed of his own lack of understanding, ashamed to have watched the sharpened tempers of his friends.
He would never, Heaven help him, take part in any such scene again!
But out of it all one good thing had come—he had got Rachel! As she had looked across the room, meeting his eyes, he had known that at last his long pursuit of her was at an end....
It never occurred to him that most husbands, after such a declaration as Rachel had just made, would have stormed, reproached, ridden, for a long time to come, the high horse of conscious superior virtue.
It did not seem odd to him that at the very moment of Rachel's confession he should feel more sure of her than he had ever been before. At last the Nita Raseley debt was paid off. At last he knew, beyond question, that Rachel loved him. Best of all, perhaps, he had seen Breton and felt his own superiority.